The 36 vital hours

What really happened when she vanished

Lucy Thornton In Praia Da Luz 15/09/2007

The McCanns were due to fly home the next day and did not want their perfect family holiday to end.

But Kate and Gerry's idyllic week with their three children was to end in a nightmare that would change their lives forever.

The disappearance of their eldest daughter Madeleine, then three, on May 3 would spark Europe's largest missing person hunt.

Since then, the case has shifted from a possible kidnap to suspicions of foul play by her parents. We look back at when Madeleine vanished and unearth new witnesses and clues.

9.15AM MADELEINE and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, are quickly up and dressed and the family breakfast together in their holiday apartment.

The children go to the kids' club - on site at the Mark Warner Ocean Club complex in Praia da Luz - where they have been staying with friends. Kate and Gerry enjoyed jogs on the beach, tennis and morning strolls.

12.30PM KATE and Gerry scoop up their children from the creche and head back to their apartment for lunch. Madeleine has learnt a dance which she and her young friends are to perform for their parents the following day.

2.30PM THE family head for the Ocean Club's pool. Kate takes a last photo of Madeleine dangling her feet in the water, next to sister Amelie and Gerry. They spend the rest of the afternoon pottering.

5PM THE McCanns join friends for drinks at a restaurant in Praia da Luz where the children have their tea. A waiter, who has not spoken before, said: "They arrived in beach clothes and there was a big group. Nine adults and six or seven children and they took up two large tables. The adults ordered alcoholic drinks and had quite a lot. They were happy." Gerry played in front of the restaurant with his children, pushing Madeleine on a swing.

The waiter said Madeleine's parents called her in from the beach to eat her meal on the balcony of the restaurant.

He said: "When he brought her back to get an ice-cream, she was jumping up and down with excitement. It was a lovely sight."

6PM MADELEINE eats her ice cream as the group leave for their holiday apartment. It is the last time she is seen in public.

7.30PM KATE gives Madeleine a bath, then dries her hair, carefully taking out a bead she had put in earlier in the week.

Then she helps her into her pink pyjamas and puts her to bed next to the twins' cots at around 8pm.

As Madeleine snuggles up to her beloved Cuddle Cat toy, she says: "Mummy, I've had the best day ever. I'm having lots and lots of fun."

8PM KATE and Gerry spend half an hour together before meeting friends at the tapas bar, as usual, at 8.30pm. It has a view of the apartments 50 metres away where they are all staying. The McCanns choose not to use the baby-sitting service.

8.30PM THE couple meet seven others at the restaurant including Russell O'Brien and his wife Jane Tanner as well as Dr Matthew Oldfield and his wife Rachael.

9PM GERRY is the first to return to the block, checking on his children at 9.05pm. He sees all three children sound asleep. On his way back to the restaurant, Gerry bumps into Brit Jeremy Wilkins, with whom he had played tennis. Jane Tanner goes to check on her daughter who is ill.

9.15PM AS Jane enters their block - number five - she sees a man carrying what looks like a child wrapped in a blanket. She barely gives him a second glance. The restaurant is buzzing as diners take part in a quiz, organised by aerobics instructor Najova Chekaya.

9.30PM DR Oldfield gets up to look in on his children and offers to check on the McCanns'. Instead of going into apartment 5A he listens at the door. Satisfied the children are sound asleep, he rejoins the party and reports all was well. At around the same time, as the quiz ends, Gerry invites Ms Chekaya, 21, to join their table. She is with them for half an hour. Dr O'Brien also leaves the table for 25 minutes to look after his ill daughter, returning shortly before 10pm.

10PM KATE leaves the group to check on the children. Letting herself into the flat, she opens the door to the kids' bedroom and freezes for a split second. Madeleine's bed is empty. A bolt of terror shoots through her followed by panic. Hysterical, she races back to the restaurant. One witness said she shouts: "They've taken her, they've taken her.

The group run back with her to the apartment and help Kate and Gerry triple check every room, looking under the beds, in the wardrobes, behind the doors. Their panic grows. The couple are said to have known immediately that their daughter had been taken because Cuddle Cat was left on a ledge impossible for Madeleine to reach and a window shutter had been forced open.

10.10PM THE alarm is raised with the resort manager within 10 minutes. The Mirror has learned Gerry bursts into the Ocean Club's reception and asks for a priest and the police.

Told it is too late to get hold of the priest, he then runs down the hill towards the church, stopping cars and pleading: "Have you seen a little girl? She's my daughter and she's missing." Friends and staff join in the search. Kate stays with the twins, waiting for news.

10.41PM THE police claim they receive a call telling them that a child is missing.

11.03PM TWO local officers arrive at the club and after a laboured questioning session involving a translator then call the Policia Judiciaria who investigate serious crimes. Friends of the McCanns allege that shortly after 11pm, they see British expat Robert Murat, who lives nearby with his mother, join the search party at the Ocean Club. He denies this, saying he was at home with his mother.

MAY 4

4AM A TEAM of detectives set up an operation centre in four apartments near the McCanns' flat to start quizzing holiday makers, staff and Luz residents.

Sniffer dogs scour the town. The frenzied search is well underway. Police also begin bugging phones. By the early hours they have investigated more than 4,500 phone calls made in Praia da Luz. It is later claimed that a call is made at 2am by Robert Murat to computer expert Sergey Malinka, 22.

Murat would later be made an official suspect, his computer seized, his garden dug up and his movements scrutinised before police interest in him eventually waned.

Although Malinka is also quizzed by the police and his house searched, he told the Mirror he saw no record of the alleged call from the man who he had helped before with his real estate website.

However, since being linked to Murat, the young Russian said his life has been turned upside down. He said: "I'm innocent but I lost my friends and my business which I invested seven years on. Customers just left.

"People don't talk to me and some still point at me in the street so I don't go out. I have had raging calls at midnight threatening to chop my head off. I'm the bad guy.

"Now I'm thinking about moving to the sticks, away from all the people.

"My grandma went to the hospital and someone said to her 'your grandson's a paedophile'. I want it all to finish."

7AM THROUGHOUT Praia da Luz bins are opened, people look under cars, in gardens, in swimming pools and all along the beach.

One expat recalls: "The whole town joined in, people didn't go to bed, they were looking until 6 or 7am. The next morning we were all given maps with areas divided into different search zones and a picture of Madeleine.

"My husband came home after searching and burst into tears, we have children of our own and he was so upset after seeing the dad looking so distraught."

The search becomes manic. Police grab a six-year-old blonde English girl the following day on the off-chance she might be Madeleine. She screams as armed officers pick her up, leaving her horrified aunt racing to produce her passport.

Police officers tell fishermen and boat owners to keep an eye out for anything unusual and perhaps a "black bag".

One focus is 18 tide-washed caves which lie along the coast. But as one fisherman says this week: "There are small tidal movements so if the body was dumped far enough out to sea there is no chance it will be seen again. I still check the caves, just in case."

9AM A BRITISH expat barmaid turns up on the McCanns' doorstep, telling them she has had a psychic vision of Madeleine looking out of a window. She is the first of 150 psychics to descend on the resort, all claiming to know what happened to the girl.

Police take a statement from the woman and apparently search a nearby house which fits her vision, but find nothing.

10PM THE shattered McCanns face the media for the first time. Kate can barely speak. Her husband looks empty and dazed. His hands shake as he reads out a statement. In the following days, police say they have a sketch of a suspect but refuse to issue it. Kate begs Madeleine's kidnapper not to hurt her.

Later, after Kate is named by Portuguese police as a suspect, the 39-year-old GP is criticised "for not showing enough emotion".

But the McCanns are advised by a British abduction expert not to cry as this would give the child's abductor "a kick".

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